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Sound and fury: Life on the road with Ole Miss' Marshall Henderson

If there's been anyone in SEC history who drew the ire of opposing fans quite like Ole Miss' Marshall Henderson, longtime observers like Blue Ribbon Yearbook editor Chris Dortch cannot come up with a name.

They still showed up to heckle Marshall Henderson. The Ole Miss star is college basketball's best villain, and he's put his demons out there for everyone to see. So even though there's been ice on the roads for 24 hours and the host Tennessee Volunteers are .500 in the Southeastern Conference, 25 or so students are watching Ole Miss warm-ups more than an hour before tipoff Wednesday in Knoxville, Tenn.

Henderson had just missed a practice shot, and in every rival arena someone must be there to reference cocaine.

***

Henderson is not a sympathetic figure. When you have courted attention as much as he has during a college career that will come to an end this season, five years and four schools from where it began, it'd be something less than honest to cry a tale of woe.

And Henderson does not. At this moment, though, he's just another Rebel, warming up before his second game at Thompson-Boling Arena.

But as Henderson uses a resistance band to stretch near one end of the court, a Tennessee fan comes striding by with a stack of exceedingly large fake bills. He hands them out to the students, and even Tennessee's mascot, Smokey, picked up an Abraham Lincoln and began waving it toward Henderson.

If there's been anyone in SEC history who drew the ire of opposing fans quite like Henderson, longtime observers like Blue Ribbon Yearbook editor Chris Dortch cannot come up with a name.

The venom toward Henderson is different than it is, for say, Ohio State's Aaron Craft — or even digging into the recent past, someone like Duke's Greg Paulus. They were heckled because they played with an edge and almost always won, but it was not as personal as it is with Henderson.

You dislike the idea of Greg Paulus. You loathe Marshall Henderson.

"I'm not suggesting it's a good idea to nearly incite a riot, as he did last year at Auburn, but clearly he draws motivation from making himself a target," Dortch said.

Marshall Henderson during warm-ups prior to the game against Tennessee.(Photo: Randy Sartin, USA TODAY Sports)

If he notices the taunts Wednesday, Henderson does not play along. The truth is that this kind of stuff has been happening for years, well before his three-game suspension for failed drug tests and even before he used fake money to buy a large amount of marijuana as a high school senior.

"Even when he was in elementary school," Shelley Henderson, Marshall's mother, said of the heckling.

Sometimes, someone will say something new, or unique, and he'll remember it in order to tell friends and family. But as long as the chatter stays in the same general area — drugs, money, he sucks — Henderson has learned to block it out.

"I like it," Henderson said. "It takes a lot of attention off the other guys on the team, which I think is probably a good thing. They can just go through the motions and not think about anything else. I can handle it, so it's fine."

Said coach Andy Kennedy: "There's nothing that anybody can do or say to him that he has not experienced before."

***

It's a critical game for Ole Miss, which has won five of its first six SEC games and is slowly building a resume worthy of a second straight NCAA Tournament selection.

Tennessee is not having the kind of season it expected, but it's still a talented group. Jordan McRae is one of the better wings in the SEC, if not the country, and forwards Jarnell Stokes and Jeronne Maymon can dominate the paint. Ole Miss needs to play its best game to have a chance and cannot afford an off night from Henderson.

Thirty-two seconds into the game, though, Henderson is down on the court. Trying to come off a baseline screen, he took a knee to the hip, and it's causing him pain.

At first, the crowd reacts with cheers, then boos Henderson as he slowly stands, waves off a trainer and gingerly walks himself to the bench.

A year ago, Henderson was a sensation across college basketball. In a season that lacked a star, Henderson filled the void. He was largely unheard of before last January and Ole Miss was a bubble team until it won the SEC Tournament. That did not matter, because of the entertainment value in watching a 6-foot-2 kid throw up countless crazy 3-pointers and then pop his jersey to the opposing fans.

The Marshall Henderson Show reached its zenith last March, during a memorable two-game run in the NCAA Tournament where Henderson helped Ole Miss upset fifth-seeded Wisconsin, was photographed at a local bar with a drink in hand and flicked off a fan after losing to LaSalle.

Things have changed, though.

His Twitter account (@NativeFlash22), where he routinely talked trash and once even went after the fake account of an SEC point guard, has been dormant since his suspension in early July. At the behest of the athletics department, Henderson toned down his act in the wake of that discipline. Many of Ole Miss' games are on the syndicated SEC Network, which has spotty pickup in the conference's footprint and leaves those outside of it watching on the Internet.

Away from the South, he's been out of sight, out of mind. The national college basketball media has largely moved on, and so far this season Henderson has not been the ubiquitous SportsCenter presence he once was.

That seems to have only made him a more popular in-game attraction than the kiss cam.

Coastal Carolina sold out its 3,000-plus gym when Ole Miss came to town in November. Western Kentucky reported its largest nonconference crowd ever, 7,523, a month after that. There were 14,302 at South Carolina on Jan. 18, more than 5,000 more than the season average.

On this night when winter weather kept many home, Tennessee announced a crowd of 14,341. That filled up the lower bowl in the cavernous arena.

"It's definitely been different," Henderson said. "This is probably the smallest crowd we've played in front of this year. Everywhere we've gone, it's been pretty packed. That's what we want, though. We want to be a top-notch team, to where when Ole Miss comes to town people are here to watch us."

***

Henderson runs back to the locker room with two members of Ole Miss' medical staff, creating a tense moment as Rebels fans wonder the severity of his injury and witness Tennessee run up a 13-4 lead in the first five minutes.

But Henderson reappears and almost immediately heads to the scorer's table. Ole Miss can breathe easier, even if it's going to take longer than a couple of minutes to make up this deficit.

Tennessee is pushing Ole Miss' post guys around inside and making most everything on the other end. It's 37-18 with two minutes remaining in the first half when the Rebels finally make a run, one that includes a pair of Henderson 3-pointers in the span of 36 seconds.

He's suddenly on a roll, making a 3 to open the second half and screaming at teammates to get a defensive stop. They do not, although a 10-0 spurt (highlighted by a pair of 3s, giving Henderson seven for the game) makes it a six-point game. Henderson is stomping on the center court logo with a scowl on his face as Tennessee calls timeout, and the boos come down.

Behind the Ole Miss bench, Shelley Henderson watches with her sister.

"Grown adults," Shelley said. "That's what I told my sister, 'Can you believe these are grown adults?' This isn't the student body. These are grown adults yelling this crap.

"Part of you wants to turn around and yell at them. The other part is, 'Who cares?' He's just, 'Yeah, never heard that before.' But, yeah, it's hard, because you never want to hear that about anybody you love."

Family has always surrounded Henderson on the court, in one way or the other. His father, Willie, was his high school basketball coach in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth. His sister, Paige, is an Ole Miss student who can often be found near the front of the student section for home games, wearing his jersey. Henderson's use of the double-bird in Kansas City came after a fan made comments about her.

Even they struggle to see it coming, when Henderson goes from just another energetic player to the guy who can enrage an entire arena.

"You can never tell with Marshall. He's just a time bomb," Shelley said. "Every now and then I can, because he really does play the same way he has played his entire life. So every now and then I can do, 'Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. ... He did it.'"

***

Ole Miss gets within five points, but Tennessee pulls back away and makes it clear that it is the better team on this night.

With two minutes remaining, Kennedy pulls Henderson from the game. As he places a towel over his shoulder and talks to director of basketball operations Dayton Miller, the Tennessee student section serenades him with a profane chant not fit for print.

Personally, it's a good night for Henderson. He scored 26 points, and even after missing on a couple of late prayers, he was 8-of-19 from 3-point range.

Henderson averages 19.1 points per game, has made a 3 in 53 straight games (eight shy of a new SEC record) and is on a team that has surprised many. After the game, he says all the right things, about now focusing on today's opponent South Carolina and how to pick up the young players who struggled on Wednesday.

Ole Miss made a difficult decision in the offseason to continue on this path with Henderson, when it would have been easier to dismiss him and claim a moral superiority. It did not. And so far, he has lived up to his end of the bargain.

On this night, Henderson seems to be comfortable in his own skin. He proudly shows off the knit cap he had Lily Pad (an Oxford store more known for selling sorority T-shirts than servicing college basketball players) customize with a Colonel Reb emblem.

In this moment, as he bounds down the hallway to steal a few minutes with his mom and aunt, he's Marshall — not the NativeFlash22 character he created for himself.

They're interrupted several times by Tennessee fans wanting to shake his hand, and even a group of kids who want a photo. Henderson obliges and continues the conversation until he's pulled away to the team bus.

Jan. 29: Ohio State Buckeyes guard Aaron Craft lays in a shot against Penn State Nittany Lions forward Brandon Taylor during the first half of the game at Schottenstein Center.
Rob Leifheit, USA TODAY Sports